Irish ISP offers free music, “four strikes” to subscribers

One of Ireland's biggest ISPs is offering a carrot-and-stick deal for its …

Here's the good news for Ireland's millions of music lovers. Eircom, one of the country's biggest ISPs, has launched a new streaming music service free of any additional charges to its subscribers. Eircom's MusicHub will offer four million music tracks to the company's customers without any restrictions or advertising (sorry Ars readers, unless you currently reside in the Republic of Ireland, you probably won't be able to connect to that link).

"We are the first and only Internet provider in Ireland to offer online streaming as part of a music service," boasted Eircom's Stephen Beynon on Wednesday. "Customers will not find a greater selection of music across all genres anywhere else in Ireland from their broadband provider."

Plus, Eircom subscribers can download songs at rates that the ISP says are up to 75 percent cheaper than iTunes, with no DRM strings attached. €5.99 a month gets an Irish music fan 15 tracks a month. €12.99 buys her 40, the equivalent of 32c per download. And the service will be open to non-Eircom subscribers too.

"The 4 million tracks available for stream or download would consume approximately 25TB of hard disk space," Eircom brags in its list of "interesting facts" about the new offering.

But here's the more complicated news. "Coinciding with the launch of Eircom's new exciting on line music service" is a statement promising to maintain its "initiative" with the Irish Recorded Music Association (IRMA) to combat illegal downloading.

It's all part of Eircom's ongoing "graduated response" protocol, announced on Wednesday as well. Looks like we've got a classic carrot-and-stick approach before us. The ISP's "four strikes" plan will operate as follows:

Will clearly advise

In stage one, if the IRMA thinks that it has identified an illegal music sharer, it will send Eircom the allegedly offending IP address. Upon receiving the notice, Eircom will contact the customer in question to warn that their account has been linked to the aforementioned location, suggesting some infringing activity.

"eircom will clearly advise the customer that such acts are illegal and in breach of the terms and conditions of broadband service," the protocol explains, "and eircom will provide information as to how the customer can avoid repeating the infringement."

In stage two, if the subscriber continues to behave badly, she or he will get a second warning letter "indicating that unless the infringement ceases the customer's broadband service will be suspended."

If a third infringement takes place, Eircom will suspend the customer's broadband service for seven days.

Finally, "the customer will also be informed that should they continue to engage in illegal filesharing of music illegally in breach of copyright and a further notification of infringement is received, the customer's broadband service will be disconnected for a 12 month period."

Absolutely not

Eircom says that it has assembled a "dedicated team" to calm frazzled nerves as this system gets underway. The company's Q&A page anticipates hypothetical questions. "Will customer details be handed over to the music industry?" an imaginary subscriber asks.

"Absolutely not," eicom replies. "eircom will write to the customers in question. This ensures that data protection compliance is maintained. Under no circumstances will eircom be handing over customer details to any third party."

Eircom came to this graduated response approach in a graduated way. Two years ago the ISP found itself being sued by EMI, Warner, Universal, and Sony. The music companies complained that Eircom was more or less facilitating piracy by advertising on The Pirate Bay, and generally just not being cooperative around the illegal downloading problem.

So Eircom settled out of court, agreeing to get with the graduated response program—although it continued to insist that it wouldn't block access to The Pirate Bay absent a court order (which the content industry eventually obtained), and wouldn't install sniffing gear on its network.

The deal still didn't sit well with Ireland's Data Protection Commissioner, however, who requested a judicial ruling on the legality of the settlement. That he received on April 16, when that country's High Court colorfully declared that a graduated strikes approach was necessary because "the mischievous side of the human personality, containing a repulsive aspect as well as an attractive and humorous one, has also come to the fore over the Internet."

With all due respect to Irish jurisprudence and moral philosophy, we'll continue to err with those who place illegal file sharing far down on the list of "repulsive" human behaviors—way below the ones that clearly and directly harm people. And we'll continue to worry about the impact of shutting off Internet service to households in an age when broadband has become as much of a necessity as electricity or affordable transportation, based only on the say-so of private investigators like Dtecnet, which is providing IRMA's intelligence.

But this new MusicHub service looks like a pretty sweet carrot. And Eircom's new protocol could be a fairly slow and cautious stick, as sticks go, with chances built in to clear up confusions and mistakes. (The company insists that it has people dedicated to looking into customer complaints that they have been misidentified, and it promises that business won't be cut off at all. Also, if you get booted, your Internet fees are refunded.) That all depends, of course, on how it is implemented in practice.

Matthew Lasar
Matt writes for Ars Technica about media/technology history, intellectual property, the FCC, or the Internet in general. He teaches United States history and politics at the University of California at Santa Cruz. Emailmatthew.lasar@arstechnica.com//Twitter@matthewlasar